The Web and Web users are changing as the demographics of web use shift. Firstly there is a greater range of web sites and a number of dominant web destinations that serve as information hubs for various user communities. It is likely that most companies will not be able to provide the key discussion hub for every user community that it seeks to provide products to, and therefore customers are going to be discussing company products and services in a number of places on the web.
According to a first aspect of the present invention there is provided a method of classifying data, the data comprising a plurality of data sets, the method comprising the steps of: a) identifying data values from one or more of the plurality of data sets; b) classifying the one or more data sets on the basis of the data values identified in step a); and c) assigning the one or more data sets to one or more categories. Preferably, the method comprises the further step of: d) allocating one or more of the data sets to an agent in accordance with the result of step c).
Step a) may comprise: i) identifying the creator of one or more of the plurality of data sets; and ii) identifying one or more further data sets which for which the creator has an association with the creator identified in step i). Step b) may comprise; iii) classifying the one or more data sets based on the classification of the one or more further data sets identified in step ii). Step c) may comprise; iv) assigning the one or more data sets in accordance with the results of step iii).
In one particular embodiment of the present invention a) comprises extracting keywords from each of the plurality of data sets to form a plurality of keyword clusters. The keywords for extraction may be identified from a predetermined set of keywords. In step b) the classification comprises determining a ratio of keywords that match one of the keyword clusters to the total number of keywords. In step c) a data set may be assigned to a category in accordance with the keyword ratio value. Furthermore, in step iii), a ratio may be determined in accordance with the number of data sets assigned to each category and the total number of data sets created.
According to a second aspect of the present invention there is provided an apparatus comprising a central processing unit, volatile memory means and data storage means wherein, in use, the apparatus is configured to execute any of the methods as described above.
According to a third aspect of the present invention there is provided a tangible computer readable medium comprising computer executable code for performing a any of the methods as described above.
The present invention provides a system and a method for gathering user generated online content, organising it, allocating it to agents for processing and helping the agents to handle it. The method of the present invention comprises a resourcing system and a content analysis system to prioritize and distribute work to the agents. The content analysis system is used to partition the available posts into topics. These are matched against the agents profiles and allocated to their workstacks for processing. As posts arrive dynamically they can be allocated into work stacks in preference to posts that are already queued there. Posts that are de-queued can either be ejected from the work stack altogether or can be reallocated to another agent. The method of the present invention further comprises history and posting mechanisms which enable agents to handle interactions over time by monitoring responses to agent posts and ensuring the post is redistributed to the agent. This can be used as prioritization information for the agents workstack and can be used to enable agents to see the contexts of the posts that they are handling. Furthermore, the present invention utilises an automated cluster formation system to find significant topics in the data.